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Review my site...be easy I am a rookie

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All Forums >> Web Design >> Site Critiques >> Review my site...be easy I am a rookie

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Travis Crocker Posts: 8 Joined: 10/4/2002 Status: offline	Review my site...be easy I am a rookie - 10/5/2002 12:14:46 I need some help well actually more like constructive criticism of my website from all standpoints. www.driveinpeace.com thnks Travis


Mike54 Posts: 4791 Joined: 3/26/2001 From: Way Up Over Status: online	RE: Review my site...be easy I am a rookie - 10/5/2002 13:09:57 Hi Travis and welcome to the forums. I like the general look of the site but... You might want to revisit your page width settings as your home page is at 650 pixels, " About us" is 741, " Preview" is 653 then " Not FAQ" is set to 100% as is " Contact" . The 650/653 pixel pages looked OK at 800x600 but used only slightly more than 1/2 of my screen at 1024x678. All of the links I clicked on from the home page took me to pages with no navigation - consistancy is important and you don' t want visitors to get lost. On the home page I would try to break the content into several sub pages. I (and I speak only for myself) don' t care to scroll down lengthy pages especially if there are no " Back to top" links sprinkled in. The links going to the newspaper clipping seem a bit cheesy (MOO). Perhaps you could use the images on a page (or pages) and type the text in? Please don' t think I' m being negative, I think you have a good start, these are just a few things I noticed. Oh and the page transitions don' t work in netscape. _____________________________ Who was the first guy that looked at a cow and said, "I think that I'll drink whatever comes out of those things when I squeeze them"? New photogalleries, stop by sometime. (in reply to Travis Crocker)


Peppergal Posts: 2207 Joined: 9/20/2002 Status: offline	RE: Review my site...be easy I am a rookie - 10/5/2002 13:12:04 Your main page is way too long; divide it into individual pages rather than a long scrolling page. Watch for spelling and grammar errors. Also...I would suggest a different picture for the top banner...I had to stare at it a while to figure out what the heck it was and what it had to do with driving. This looks like a neat resource. My brother is a police officer in Washington State; he' d be interested to see this! _____________________________ Northeast PA / Poconos/ Lake Wallenpaupack Real Estate wallenpaupacklakeproperty.com Karen's Real Estate Blog (in reply to Travis Crocker)


Helene Posts: 213 Joined: 9/17/2002 From: a small island in Canada eh? Status: offline	RE: Review my site...be easy I am a rookie - 10/5/2002 15:57:04 Welcome to the forums Travis. Boy, you' re brave asking for a site critique right off the bat . . . I don' t think I' d have the guts. But you did ask for constructive criticism, and that' s certainly what you' ll get here. The folks here are super supportive and very constructively critical. Anyway, I agree with all the above comments, plus here' s a few more. 1) I don' t like the animated .gifs you' ve used above the nav bar on some of the pages. I find them highly distracting. They take away from the message of your site. (I bet I' m not alone on this one either...) 2) Also, I find the fake windows/browser look in your header/footer bars and buttons somewhat distracting as well. 3) Watch out for your file names. You don' t want to use spaces when naming pages as this can cause problems down the line. A page named About Us.htm should be renamed to something like about_us.htm 4) some of your page title tags don' t match your content, you might want to check those 5) I for one like to be warned when I click on something that is pointing to anything that is not " standard" , such as a .pdf file. Okay, I know, I know, PDF files are standard, but I still usually don' t open them. I don' t like them, but I may someday grow to tolerate them. Until that day, I like it when a site says something like " view these excerpts as .pdf files" or something similar. Otherwise I grunt and groan and shut the thing down. (But that' s probably just me.) I think that' s enough out of me. Please receive my comments with the good intent they were sent with. We all started out where you are once, and I think we' re all really grateful for the honest critiques we' ve received along the road. Just remember to have fun. In fact " playing" with the software is how you will learn a whole lot of stuff! _____________________________ Helene M. websitemanagement.ca Personal Site: Best of Salt Spring Online (in reply to Travis Crocker)


Seventh Posts: 1235 Joined: 8/4/2002 From: The Motor City Status: offline	RE: Review my site...be easy I am a rookie - 10/5/2002 16:30:33 Heart Attack Alert You' re going to receive hate mail for this page. I would definitely rethink the layout and background behind the text. _____________________________ "go forth and create." (in reply to Travis Crocker)


tterrifc Posts: 690 From: Riverside CA USA Status: offline	RE: Review my site...be easy I am a rookie - 10/5/2002 16:36:23 You have a great start there, Travis. Lots of great information. Lots. I go with Mike and Peppergal in breaking some of those long pages down into easily readable smaller pages. It just feels better when you can zip through multiple pages versus a few long, long pages. Helene' s ideas are super too. My other contribution would be to remember alt tags, consistency in font sizes and only one or two fonts for the whole site. And, don' t forget to do your meta tags. Be sure and resubmit your changes to us so we can enjoy your progress. We' ve been helped by others too. _____________________________ Terry Ellis http://www.terryellisphotography.com http://www.protectall.com http://www.protectallshineplus.com (in reply to Travis Crocker)


Travis Crocker Posts: 8 Joined: 10/4/2002 Status: offline	RE: RE: Review my site...be easy I am a rookie - 10/6/2002 0:46:45 quote: ORIGINAL: Seventh Heart Attack Alert You' re going to receive hate mail for this page. I would definitely rethink the layout and background behind the text. why do you say i am going to get hate mail for my page (in reply to Seventh)


Travis Crocker Posts: 8 Joined: 10/4/2002 Status: offline	RE: RE: Review my site...be easy I am a rookie - 10/6/2002 1:11:13 quote: ORIGINAL: Mike54 Hi Travis and welcome to the forums. I like the general look of the site but... You might want to revisit your page width settings as your home page is at 650 pixels, " About us" is 741, " Preview" is 653 then " Not FAQ" is set to 100% as is " Contact" . The 650/653 pixel pages looked OK at 800x600 but used only slightly more than 1/2 of my screen at 1024x678. All of the links I clicked on from the home page took me to pages with no navigation - consistancy is important and you don' t want visitors to get lost. On the home page I would try to break the content into several sub pages. I (and I speak only for myself) don' t care to scroll down lengthy pages especially if there are no " Back to top" links sprinkled in. The links going to the newspaper clipping seem a bit cheesy (MOO). Perhaps you could use the images on a page (or pages) and type the text in? Please don' t think I' m being negative, I think you have a good start, these are just a few things I noticed. Oh and the page transitions don' t work in netscape. ********* Mike thanks a ton for the valuable information....I have tried and tried to get all the pages at 100%. Please tell me what steps to take to get all the pages at 100%...I went to the page options>then to margins for each page but they all have the same settings for the margins (in reply to Mike54)


Mike54 Posts: 4791 Joined: 3/26/2001 From: Way Up Over Status: online	RE: Review my site...be easy I am a rookie - 10/6/2002 8:02:41 Hi Travis, I' m afraid I worded that incorrectly. It' s the " table" width settings not the page width. For example, if you right click in the table that makes up your home page and select " Table Properties" you' ll see the settings are 650 in pixels for width and 100 in percent for height. If you check some of the cells they are also in pixels but don' t all match up. The cell with your nav is set at 125 pixels and the cell immediately below is 129. The next cell (to the right) is 475 pixels and the width of the right column is 158 pixels for a total width of 758 pixels. The (imbedded) table with your main text is set to 100 percent (that' s OK). You might want to get a copy of the site available locally and try changing the settings to 100% (or 95 - 90% depending on how you want it to look) for all the tables. Using percentages will allow the page to stretch depending on a visitors screen resolution. I don' t think it' s a good idea to work live on the site since sometimes tables do weird things when you reset things. Give it a go and let us know how it works out. < Message edited by Mike54 -- 10/5/2002 8:04:52 AM > _____________________________ Who was the first guy that looked at a cow and said, "I think that I'll drink whatever comes out of those things when I squeeze them"? New photogalleries, stop by sometime. (in reply to Travis Crocker)


gerrycunningham Posts: 11 Joined: 4/15/2002 From: Oakville ON Canada Status: offline	RE: Review my site...be easy I am a rookie - 10/6/2002 18:04:14 Hi, The purpose of the website is very unclear until you read and read and... Redo the front page to clearly state the purpose and objectives of the website. Gerry (in reply to Travis Crocker)


Seventh Posts: 1235 Joined: 8/4/2002 From: The Motor City Status: offline	RE: Review my site...be easy I am a rookie - 10/7/2002 3:05:30 quote: Heart Attack Alert You' re going to receive hate mail for this page. I would definitely rethink the layout and background behind the text. The color scheme. White background surrounding all the text on a light blue(?) page background. Seems, in no other words, extremely unattractive. Hard to read. Hard to decipher visually. But hey, that' s just my opinion.[:j] _____________________________ "go forth and create." (in reply to Travis Crocker)


amavrick Posts: 16 Joined: 12/19/2001 From: HERTS. England. Status: offline	RE: Review my site...be easy I am a rookie - 10/8/2002 14:26:42 I like the way the pages fizzle from 1 to another how did U do it? (in reply to Travis Crocker)